How to get referred to a psychiatrist

First of all, I’m writing from a Canadian health care perspective but it should be similar in western countries where the health system utilizes General Physicians and Specialists.  I believe in th US, it’s got a similar referral system.   I’ve been through the system so I will explain as much detail as possible and provide you with some tips so you can seek help and start recovering.

If you are in an emergency situation, PLEASE go to your nearest emergency hospital for prompt treatment.  I know in major cities, there are emergency mental health hospitals that have psychiatrists onsite to deal with patients. Don’t be afraid of the mental health care system, it’s not what the internet perceives it to be.

General Physicans would be what we called family doctors, it’s usually the first point of contact in the health care system, they are like the handymen.  Psychiatrists are known as specialists because they specialize in mental health issues so you can’t just walk into a specialist’s clinic and expect the doctor to see you.  It just doesn’t work that way.  I know in Asia, at least in China, you normally would see a specialist directly but that’s a whole different health care system over there.

The first step is getting an appointment with your family doctor or physician.  This should be pretty fast, from a day to couple weeks.  Now this is very important especially with mental health issues, I know people tend to tell doctors about symptoms in a way that sounds less crazy because they do not want to be labeled “crazy” and they want the doctors to tell them they are fine.  This is wrong!  You have to be genuine and tell them everything that you are experiencing.  There is no shame and do not afraid, you are there to seek help.  If you want a referral to a psychiatrist, you have to be truthful with your doctors, do not hide any problems.  Some family doctors do overlook mental health issues so if they tell you “oh you’re fine, take some rest”, insist that they refer you to a psychiatrist if you feel like you need to.  Usually they will also perform some basic tests like blood test to make sure no physical issues in your case.

The next step in the process is wait….. a long wait… it took me almost a year and I think that’s the average for psychiatrists.  It’s very unfortunate that the wait time is so long but it is what it is.  The more awareness we raised about mental health issues, the more doctors the system will put into this field.

After months of waiting, you’re finally and excited to see the specialist(psychiatrist).  Same tip again, be genuine and tell him exactly what you are experiencing, don’t hide anything from him.  Remember, he is a doctor, he is trying to help you.  Mental diagnosis is just a label, what difference does it make if he diagnoses you with this or that?  There is no difference, you are still suffering and you will still need treatment.  Label is just a label, remember that.  Don’t read all the horror stories on the internet about how psychiatrists just stuffs you with medication, I’ve never experienced that.  Every one of them I met were nice and understandable.  They never pushed medication on me in any way.

Remember that mental health issues require longer term treatment so it’s important to find a doctor especially when you’re prescribed medication, to follow you up through the whole treatment process.  It’s not like a cold where you see a doctor once and the next time is god knows when.

I hope this helps all of you!

Drug Related DP/DR

Those who are curious, mine was not drug or cannabis induced, I’ve never taken any drugs in my life but I don’t think it matters.  Here is why,  I 100% believe that cannabis is just an external factor that contributes to the internal process that triggers Depersonalization/Derealization.  It is a trigger and trigger in many cases isn’t really important.  Trigger and cause are two very different terms.  Trigger is what starts the process and cause is what’s really happening during the process that causes all of your symptoms.  Prior to all of this happening to me, I had two small episodes of DP/DR which were triggered by fluorescent light, I’ve always had issues with fluorescent light.  When I went to my psychiatrist who specializes in dissociation, he said that fluorescent light is just an external trigger, there must be an internal factor that allows the external trigger to start the process, main thing is stress.

Many drugs are considered dissociative drugs and I’m not sure if cannabis is one of them but I believe cannabis should be one of them.  It’s no surprise that dissociative drugs induce dissociation.  Under normal circumstance, the effects of dissociation wears out when the drug leaves your system, no internal factor in this case.  If cannabis can induce permanent DP/DR then everyone who has taken it would have suffered from this condition.

But then there is the “bad trip”, from my readings at least from the book, “bad trip” tends to happen more during stressful period.  As you can see, there is always that internal factor which in many cases of bad trips is again stress.   So the question is why DP/DR becomes chronic after a “bad trip”?   My theory is that the drug has triggered the protection mechanism of the brain which your brain is already prone to during stressful period.  This is why people can take cannabis for years and not have a bad trip and suddenly one day, a small dose triggers chronic DP/DR.  You can find many examples of this on forums.  The research book I bought “Depersonalization : A New Look at a Neglected Syndrome” has a whole chapter about drug induced DP/DR and the interesting fact is that virtually they found no difference between drug-induced and non-drug induced.

Anyways, the point that I’m trying to get through is that whether your DP/DR was caused by drug or other triggers, it’s not as important as you think.  Like how my psychiatrist says it, the why sometimes is not always clear or important.  But of course, we’re not talking about physical causes that can cause symptoms of DP/DR.  Either way, we are looking for the same treatment and try to get better.

A good analogy to understand this is to take a simple allergy as an example.  Let say you develop skin rashes from drinking alcohol or certain juices.  Alcohol and juice are triggers and immune system reaction is the cause of skin rash.  The treatment would be the same, you would take some kind of antihistamines to reduce the reaction.

The reason why I’m writing this blog is there have been hot discussions of drug related DP/DR and non-drug related DP/DR.  My advice to everyone is DO NOT take drugs, it is not worth it.  I understand sometimes there is peer pressure but your life is much more valuable.

Stay strong people! 

Books on Depersonalization/Derealization

First of all, there aren’t many out there about Depersonalization/Derealization anyways.  But  I’ve read many and will try to give you a summary on all of them so you do not need to spend the money.  My general advice is that there isn’t anything that you will find in these books that you can’t find on the internet.  It’s wonderful that we live in the technology age where medical information is readily available.  I can’t imagine DP/DR sufferers 20 years ago, I truly feel their pain, perception on mental illness has greatly improved over the recent years too.

My advice to you is not to read a book but speak to a professional psychologist or psychiatrist and begin your recovery journey.  I’m not saying that those books aren’t good but this condition is not a condition that is suitable for self-help.  Behavior does aggravates the symptoms but this condition is more than behaviors, it’s your brain chemicals so speak to a doctor.

Here are some of the books I’ve read so far about Depersonalization and Derealization.

1. Overcoming Depersonalization Disorder

This book is really the only book specifically about DP/DR.  It mainly focuses on different therapies that can benefit DP/DR, for example, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.  There is a section about treatment from a pharmaceutical approach but it’s limited.

1. Depersonalization – A New Look At a Neglected Syndrome

This is a research book, it basically puts all of the research that have been done by King’s College of London Depersonalization Research Unit.  I have heard that the lead researcher has left and the unit is not in a good state, very unfortunate.  This unit is really one of very very few centers that focuses on Depersonalization Research.  As the title implies, it is a neglected syndrome but it is a lot more common than what people think.  The target audience is really for the medical community, it goes into many theories of DP/DR and why they occurr.  This book also features different case examples and the treatments that went along with them.  It’s a good read but it’s expensive.

1. The Body Keeps the Score

This book mainly focuses on trauma related dissociation, like PTSD which can have Depersonalization and Derealization as symptoms.  It’s an interesting read but not targeted towards DP/DR.

1. At Last A Life

This book is mainly on DP/DR from an anxiety and panic attack perspective.  I think DP/DR can stem from anxiety and panic but there are many other causes.  I didn’t find this book useful.

My book collection on Amazon Kindle

Like I mentioned, everything is available on the internet, the books offer no secret.  I would greatly encourage that you speak to a psychiatrist to begin your treatment journey.  Instead of reading these books, an alternative is go out and live your life.  You can read eveything there is to about DP/DR and gain nothing from it.

There is a light at the end of this tunnel, the world is with you!

Depersonalization/Derealization – Reading too much is bad.

I’m writing this post to tell you guys why reading too much on this condition is bad.  I understand that you want to be better informed but at the same time, you have to understand that not much is known about this condition and while reading research papers can be interesting but they can also dangerous.

In the past few days, I’ve been feeling a little down and came across this article which made it even worst.  It talks about brain anatomy differences between normal people and Depersonalization/Derealization sufferers.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4275327/

In the conclusion part it states:

“Patients with DPD are characterized by extensive, but circumscribed alterations in brain anatomy rather than large-scale morphological aberrations as seen in patients with schizophrenia. “

Sounds scary isn’t it?  Extensive alterations!  But wait, read the other part of the article.

 

“Owing to the cross-sectional nature of this study, it remains unknown if the observed structural brain differences are best understood as risk factors for the development of DPD or as a result of the disorder.  Future studies should aim at capturing possible neuroplastic adjustments over the course of the disorder, using a longitudinal design and a sample of patients with recent symptom onset.”

Basically what they are saying is that they don’t know if the brain has really been altered as a result of this condition or our brains are different to begin with and those differences are just risk factors.  To study changes or alterations, it has to be over a period of time.  How can they conclude that our brains have been through extensive alterations but in this paragraph says they are really differences and they need to do a long term study to see the neuroplastic adjustments.

Research papers are just research papers and they don’t mean much, they can be completely wrong.   You get the point, because when I saw “extensive changes”, I was a little scared and that will just leave you hopeless.

I’m sure our brains are different than normal brains, no doubt about that.  But scan any psychiatric patient with anxiety, bipolar, anxiety, OCD and the list goes on, you will observe extensive anomalies in the brain.  It doesn’t just take one tiny spot in the brain to cause psychiatric symptoms I think, it is many things at work.

Now stop reading these things, you can be the master of condition and know everything but as long as these research papers haven’t translated into medical papers or training for doctors to provide treatment, you can’t do much about it.   So go out and improve your general well being and beat this beast.

“We human beings are the greatest survivors! We do not give up, we will fight to the last second!”

 

Memory and Time Perception

I still struggle with this up to today, although not as bad as when I first acquired this condition.  I have made good improvements in this area.

So what does this mean?  Let’s go back to pre-DPDR days.  Let say you went to the gym two days ago, as you are recalling the memory two days later, you know exactly which day you actually went to the gym, it just seems naturally clear.  Another example, you called your parent last night and the next morning, you are pretty darn sure you called your parent last night.  Now going back to DP/DR, this clarity and awareness somewhat is extremely fogged up.  Things you did couple hours ago seem like you did them ages ago, you have difficulty telling when a particular memory had happened because it feels so foggy and dreamy.  Sometimes you loose awareness of which day of the week is it, all because of DULL memories.  This is what I mean by memory and time perception and if you think of DPDR as a dream state, it totally makes sense.

Have you ever had these occasions where you’re sleeping deeply in the middle of the night and someone wakes you up and ask you something, you answer and you fall back to sleep.  The next morning, either you forget about that experience or if you do remember, the memory does not feel real, you ask yourself like did it really happened or did it happened in a dream?  Because DPDR sufferers are in a permanent state of this, all aspect of consciousness will have dream like qualities to them.

Another explaination is that memory is formed based on your attachment/interaction with environments and surroundings.  When that connection breaks loose and you become detached from the surroundings, your memory will automatically feel distant as well.  Time, on the other hand is based on your memory and the emotions attached to them, without vivid and emotional memory, your perception of time will automatically be affected.

If a doctor can induce some kind of half awake state on a patient, I bet this patient will describe exactly what we are describing.  Like I said the brain is a lot more complicated than we can possibility imagine but there are a lot of good stories out there about recovery.

My support buddy while I was struggle has fully recovered and he described after 3 years of DPDR and final recovery, at the end he described the recovery as “Rebirth, waking up from a long dream.”  And I will leave it at this.

DP/DR My experience with psychiatrists

After DP/DR, my first visit with psychiatrist was at this place called CAMH, a hospital that specializes in mental health and drug addictions.  I was dealing with a particular symptom that was really bugging me. Thank god that I no longer suffer from that, it could just be that my mind was hypersensitive to everything around me.  But I was scared that I might develop psychosis because of it.  My symptom was that I could see faces in objects, not talking about actual faces but something that looks like face, my mind would perceive it.  The other thing was that I was ultra sensitive to things that I see from my peripheral vision. For example, walking down the street and walking by something that looks like a person, my mind would perceive it as a person for a split second.  This whole experience scared the hell out of me, I thought this could be an onset of psychosis.  I think some of you may be able to relate to this as I’ve seen people complaining about this on forums.  I also told the doctor about my DP/DR symptoms, I wrote everything down on the paper so I didn’t miss anything.  It was a residence doctor that I was seeing and he asked a bunch of questions during the initial assessment. As I was reading off the paper that I wrote down,  he asked to see it, I believe it was to see if there is any anything unusual that would indicate something.  He never asked me about the DP/DR part that I wrote down, I should have asked him more about it but I was too nervous.  My intent that night was more about the face symptom so I didn’t ask much about DP/DR.  After about one hour of questioning, he went to speak with his supervisor and I was given the diagnosis of OCD and Anxiety.  I was let go and went home for the night.  I felt better at least that he didn’t think that I was psychotic but at the same time I didn’t get much new information.

From the nuerologist after I cleared physicals, I was referred to a psychiatrist and I finally met him after a whole year waiting.  The previous doctor was more like a walk-in clinic and this one is more of a long term psychiatrist. I was really curious and  I wanted to find out if he had seen any patients with similar symptoms.  I reached a point where I no longer fight the condition but I wanted to know what was the cause behind this.  I thought I was the only one in the world with these symptoms if not extremely rare.  That’s in the mind of most DP/DR sufferers because the symptoms are so bizarre.

Like usual, we started with a full assessment because you can’t just go in and tell them you have DP/DR and expect some medication,  It just doesn’t work that way.  As matter of fact from my research a lot of psychiatrists don’t even recognize DP/DR as an disorder.  Like I said I waited a full year from the time of the referral to the appointment date, ya that’s how the Canadian health care system is.  I feel sorry for those who have to wait so long to get help, it is very unfortunate.  I was actually looking forward to this appointment, expecting to find some magic answer or magic pill.  It’s like you broke your arm and you’re finally going to see someone that’s going to fix it.

After a bunch of asssement questions, He agreed with my self diagnosis on DPDR and he mentioned that DP/DR is usually a secondary symptom of something else like anxiety or depression or other psychiatric illness.  As a primary disorder is extremely rare but he has seen few cases during his career.  He said medication would not help me, he said that medications sometimes make derealization worst.  Then he mentioned he doesn’t have much experience with dissociation and he has a colleague that specializes in dissociation and would bring my case up with him.  I was so glad when I heard that, maybe there is a magic cure now.  After about an hour of assessment and the final diagnosis, he said I should get some CBT which I did for couple months when I first got hit with DPDR.  He referred me to his preferred psychologist and I went home that day.

I met him again two months back, excited this time to see what his colleague who specializes in dissociation had to say.  I was disappointed that he said his colleague wouldn’t be able to help as mainly he deals with dissociative disorder like PTSD.  We chatted about OCD and DP/DR casually, a very nice and honest psychiatrist. I told him that I’m doing better but if there is more help available I will be willing to go after.  He still insisted that medication won’t do any good for my condition but one thing that he said that really hit me was that

“Sam I’m sorry I won’t be able to help you, I wish there was a brain scan to tell your what’s going on but we don’t.  We are not trained in these disorders.”

It’s unfortunate that he wasn’t be able to help me but at least he was honest and did not push me with medications like many do.  I told him that I was doing CBT for my OCD and he said continue and let’s book a follow up meeting and off I went.

I’m a little disappointed with this whole experience but I believe this is the limitation of psychiatry.  There is really no magic medication, either it’s long term therapy and recovery or we are limited by research specifically DP/DR.  However I’m only speaking for my case so please as I said these are just my opinions.

Please go seek help if you need it, you do not need to suffer in silence.  Also please DO NOT self diagnose yourself, go see a psychiatrist!  Even though it was not helpful to me but it might help you. Find another one if you do not like the current one. There are some good and honest psychiatrists out there.   Keep in mind, if you are afraid of medication(I do), they are optional, they will not lock you up. 

Stay strong guys!

Please follow me if you find my posts helpful, I will be updating this blog frequently.

My theory on Depersonalization/derealization

You can describe depersonalization and derealization in a million ways because it is so hard to describe, it is like trying to describe what afterlife is like.

We know there are some hallmark symptoms of depersonalization/derealization and they are being grouped together in the latest DSM5 as depersonalization and derealization disorder.  In my opinion, DP/DR is not as simple as a disorder, I think it should only be called a condition for now.  They are only symptoms of something else biologically we just don’t know what exactly yet.  There are many components that make up our consciousness and perception.  The memory, the emotionals and many other parts.  Any one of those or multiple parts of those go malfunction, I believe will introduce symptoms of DP/DR.  That can be said for any mental illness, it is a lot more complicated, many parts are in play for different people.  No two people experience mental illness in the same way and react to the same medication the same way.  Like I said I’m not a professional but I think some parts in our brains that give us emotions to what we see, hear, think or any sense for that matter are not working properly causing these symptoms.  Prior to DP/DR when we are at one place, there is emotion attached to the place, you do not notice it because it is natural part of our consciousness through long period of evolution with our environment.  The attachment and awareness are built into our brain and we only notice them when it’s gone missing.  When the natural emotions are gone, everything feels dull and unreal.

I actually bought the research book published by King’s College of London about depersonalization.  I was extremely glad there was actually a book about it.  Keep in mind this is a research book intended for medical health professionals, it’s not a self help book.  I was really disappointed after reading this book, it seem like we are still at the Stone Age in understanding this complicated condition.  This book summarizes many theories of depersonalization along with some study cases.  The number of studies is limited but we do know one thing, our brains show up differently on fMRI.  There you go!  It’s not “oh it’s only in your head, stop complaining!”.    See! What’s the difference between physical and mental disorder?  Nothing!  It’s just mental disorder is more complicated because we’re dealing with a magic organ and its complexity is simply beyond the scope of our own intelligence.

One of the reasons why DP/DR does not get much attention is patients don’t usually tell mental health professionals their symptoms because they are afraid they may be labeled insane.  Imagine a psychiatrist who has never heard of DP/DR(these doctors exist and quite common) hear you say “this world doesn’t seem real” or “I feel like we are all in a dream”. You know what the next thing will be.

I absolutely DO NOT believe this condition is extremely rare if we take into consideration the number of people who are suffering in silence.  Unfortunately the only statistic health professionals have is the number of people who visited their doctors and have been formally diagnosed with DP/DR.  I believe that’s only a minority of DP/DR population.  Add in the people who are misdiagnosed which I think commonly happens in psychiatry, then add in the people who are suffering in silence, now we have a condition that’s not so rare anymore.
Drug companies are business people, they won’t be sitting in their meeting rooms saying “Oh… Poor DP/DR people, we need to help these people.”.  They are sitting there discussing how to make money based on statistics.  “DP/DR 1 in 100000 whatever the number is, hmmmm not gonna make money, $0 funding.”

So what we can do?  If you’ve never been to your doctor, go now and be part of the statistic.  In general we all need to raise awareness, not only to health professionals and genera public, but to our fellow sufferers.  Let them know they are not alone, go seek help, we are an army together.  This disorder can be beaten.

I’m still working on my recovery post, coming soon!

***i just want to state a disclaimer, like I said I’m not a trained health professional, I’m a software developer(LOL).  Whatever I write here are only and sole opinions of myself,  my purpose of starting this blog is to hope more sufferers will discover this blog and this will comfort them and lead them to seek help.  At the same time, let’s raise awareness together.**

Depersonalization/Derealization Part 2

It was the most frightening experience I had ever experienced.  A permanent fog had set into my consciousness.  I felt like 80 percent of my brain had shut down not only cognitively but emotionally as well.  I was unable to experience my environment fully and when I looked at people, I just felt disconnected, I felt like I was talking to them through a screen.  I started searching on google for brain fog and found dpselfhelp.com which had many memebrs with similar symptoms that I had.  That was when I knew that I could be suffering from dissociation.

Immediately I told my wife about the experience and my brother as well, they were extremely supportive but of course they just could not understand the scope of pain that I was in.  On the outside I looked physically fine but mentally, I was in the worst nightmare any human being could ever imagined off, on the verge of loosing your mind and yet fully aware.  Nevertheless their support meant a lot for me as I was struggling badly.  There was no way out of this nightmare, every night I went to sleep, I wish I would wake up tomorrow feeling normal.   Did I think about death? Absolutely! It is human nature when one suffers extreme pain that they want to end the pain.  I wasn’t suicidal but I did think that maybe if I just die, this nightmare will end as away to comfort myself.

At work I couldn’t cope, my mental cognition and clarity weren’t there, I couldn’t remember anything which made it every hard.  I’m a software developer which requires good logical skills and maybe good memory but they were all fogged up.  I would go into a meeting and came out with nothing in my memories.   I couldn’t take it anymore, I was just into this new job for couple months and I didn’t want my reputation to be ruined.  I told a coworker about this experience and was surprised to hear that his wife suffers from panic attack.  He was extremely supportive and went lunch with me everyday and gave me a lot of support.  I still couldn’t cope so I decided to tell my boss about it and suprised that he told me he almost lost a friend to depression.  I knew there are stigma around mental illness, I honestly didn’t care about it because I was suffering so badly.  My boss was extremely supportive when I said I needed to take time off work.  From there I went on a short diasability leave.  Never in my life I had ever thought that I would be on diasability leave.

Here were some of then symptoms I was suffering:

• World didn’t seem real
• Talking to people felt like I was talking to a robot or through a screen, something was missing
• Extreme physical fatigue
• Extremely dissociated memories
• Cognitive function severely affected
• No sense of time/day/season
• Things just didn’t make sense
• Not able to “experience” what’s going on around me or what happened recently.
• Many many more!

I couldn’t convince myself that a mental illness could introduce these mind torturing symptoms.  I thought I had develop some kind of brain tumor because there was absolutely no way something mental could cause symptoms like these.  I knew I had some kind of tumor or something.  So I went to my family doctor and we started with a blood test which came back cleared.  Then I asked to see a neurologist which clearly he seemed no interest in the symptoms that I was describing.  I kept tying to describe my symptoms and he couldn’t understand.  He kept asking “What do you mean this and that?”.   He finally sent me for an EEG and MRI which I was sure they would find something physical, both came back normal.  I was finally convinced that maybe it is really dissociation. I was on dpselfhelp.com literally 24/7 looking for answer and recovery stories.  I will talk about dpselfhelp in another post in the future.

If you think anxiety or OCD is bad, dissociation is 100000000000 times worst.  “WORST POSSIBLE MENTAL MIND FXXKING SYMPTOMS ANY HUMAN BEING CAN SUFFER”

To be continued.  Next part I will be talking about the recovery part.  

Depresonalization/Derealization Part 1

This is an interesting condition because it affects human consciousness and many things that make human a “human”.  It is a condition that seems impossible to describe and a condition that seems impossible to imagine yourself in unless you’re in it.

You are born and you grow up knowing one world and this is the earth, the home planet that you’ve always known to be home.  You have continuous memories of your life, you feel normal, you go to school and find a job, everything appears just normal.  Cars, houses, airplanes, you are fascinated by life but at the same time you feel like they are natural part of reality and life.   You feel like they are physically here and the world is physically here.  Your perception of the world has always been consistent and you never question your existence.   Imagine everything is about to be changed!  The once familiar reality is no longer the same and you are fully aware of it. You are not having a break from reality but you feel like everything has changed and there is no way of return.  You feel like you are trapped in a nightmare and can just wake up anytime but you can’t.

Around 2014, I started noticing many symptoms like headache, feeling overwhelmed in crowded places and over-sensitivity to fluorescent light.  I didn’t take it very seriously because of OCD and anxiety, I attributed these symptoms to either OCD or anxiety.  Summer of 2014 I was interviewing a potential candidate for my company and under the strong fluorescent light something weird happened.  I felt like my reality melted away, my memories felt weird, I started thinking about my mother, my wife and they just felt really weird.  The room that I sat in felt strange, the world felt strange.  It was the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life! Luckily I came back after couple minutes.  It’s an experience that you remember but you can’t feel the feeling once you’re out of it.

Towards the end of 2014 I started feeling really down for no reason and I thought I was having depression but didn’t seen like I fit the bill.  Slowly I noticed that my memories became very dull, it’s so hard to describe.  You’re sitting at your place thinking about your house, normally I could feel my workplace, the city that I’ve lived in for 15 years and I could feel like my house being nearby.  Somehow I couldn’t feel these anymore, I felt like the emotions attached to my memories when you think about something were gone.  I still remember myself googling “Feeling lost”, I felt lost and I couldn’t describe my feelings so I could only use the words “Feeling Lost”.  Then the same derealization episode hit again in a highly lit fluorescent lighting environment and I started having existential thoughts of if what I am seeing is not real, my colleagues in front of me, are they real?  As someone who suffers from Harm OCD, this intensifies it and I was under distress.  I have obsessional thoughts like “What if everything is not real and I do something crazy?”.  It was so bad that I felt like I’m on the verge of insanity.

Early January of 2015, one morning I woke up things became even worst.  The night before I was under a lot of anxiety, mainly due to fear that I might develop psychosis from all which have been happening.  That morning, I woke up I felt weird.  I felt like I felt into a psychosis orsomething, things just felt weird.  I started crying but I couldn’t do it much, I felt numb and disconnected.  Time as I once knew was gone, I couldn’t  feel time.  My memories were shockingly bad, something I just did, I couldn’t remember unless I think really really hard.  Something I did minutes ago felt like I did them in my dream or I did them 2 months back.  Everything felt unfamiliar, cars on the street, my own house and everything felt weird, nothing made sense.  I was working as a software developer full-time and it seemed like I forgot everything overnight… To be continued..